Daniel Garrison took a deep breath of humid night air and swiped one hand over the sweat trickling down his forehead. The cramp in his left side felt like a knife wound, stabbing deeper with each breath. Despite the pain, he kept moving, pushing his toned muscles well beyond their limits. How could the beast move so fast?

Daniel listened while he ran, tried to slow his labored breathing long enough to detect a hint of movement in the bushes up ahead. He wanted to tire the beast, not corner it and force it to attack. At this rate, Daniel would collapse long before his quarry felt the least bit of fatigue.

“I’m still here!” he called into the dark underbrush. Perhaps it was a foolhardy taunt, but with the pond behind him he felt marginally safe. The creature avoided the water, terrified of its own hideous reflection in the glassy, moonlit surface. “Come and get me! Come on—I taste just like chicken!”

Some coherent part of Daniel’s exhausted brain protested. He had his pride, after all. “Okay, not chicken. Beef. I taste just like a nice, juicy—lean—side of beef!”

He had to be out of his mind. Of course, he was. This entire situation was insane, and only an insane man could deal with it. He would have never imagined he’d be caught dead running through Oak Haven Park in the middle of a sultry summer night chasing a werewolf. Okay, maybe “caught dead” wasn’t the best phrase.

This whole affair was his worst nightmare come true. Like a page from a Bizzaro World comic book, everything was turned upside down, dreamlike and utterly surreal.

Daniel halted in his tracks, grabbed the thick straps of the black backpack he wore over his hastily donned Delta Hawks T-shirt and ripped jeans. He should have been better prepared tonight, should have known a locked door wouldn’t be enough to stop the beast. What a fool.

He turned in a half circle, ready to bolt at the slightest sound. “Where did you go?”

A heartbeat passed…two…

Silence descended around him, and for a split second he marveled at how quiet the park could be in the middle of the night. The crickets and tree frogs had fallen mute, probably from fear of the abomination that lurked in the shadows. Nothing even breathed.

Then he heard it. A strangled sound—half moan, half growl—drifted through the trees from the direction of the waterfall. A dead-end. Damn. The beast had cornered itself. How long before anger overrode its confusion and it emerged from the underbrush in a rage?